The by-election had been caused by the resignation of former Labor Chief Minister Paul Henderson.

In the circumstances the electorate could have been annoyed at Paul Henderson and the Labor Party for causing the by-election. The electorate could have taken their choice of reasons to be annoyed at Julia Gillard and the Labor Party, either for the way she is running the country, or for her recent "captain's pick" to annoint Nova Peris as the lead candidate for Labor's NT Senate ticket.

Instead, voters turned out and expressed their dislike of the actions in office of the six-month old Mills Country Liberal government.

Voters have delivered a whopping 12.7% swing against the Country Liberals. Labor's new candidate Nicole Manison received 69.7% of the two-party preferred vote, up near Paul Henderson's winning margin at Labor's landslide election victory in 2005.

It is the worst swing against a first term government in two decades. The largest first term swing I can think of was 16% against the Greiner government in the NSW seat of Coffs Harbour at a 1990 by-election.

As for swings against a government in its first year in office, I can think of only two similar situations to the Wanguri result.

In 1994 the Brown Liberal government in South Australia lost the seat of Torrens at a by-election after a 9% swing, and in 1988 the new Greiner government in NSW suffered a 12.6% swing against it at a by-election in the Labor-held electorate of Port Stephens. Interestingly, both the Brown/Olsen government and the Greiner government failed to win majorities at the next state elections.

Can we read anything into the Wanguri result concerning this year's Federal election?

In my view, not much. It might give you a hint that the local Federal seat of Solomon is no walkover for the Coalition, but past results indicates that local Territory results are not a good guide for who will win Solomon, let alone a useful guide for the nation as a whole.

The Federal seat of Solomon covers all of the Darwin-Palmerston metropolitan area. The seat was first contested at the 2001 Federal election, and takes in 12 of the Territory's Legislative Assembly electorates.

The graph below plots Solomon results, including a retro-fit for 1998, against the total 2-party preferred results in the 12 Territory electorates within Solomon, for Territory elections from 1997 to 2012.

As the graph shows, at four of the five Federal elections since 1998, the Labor 2-party preferred vote in Solomon has been below Labor's national 2-party preferred vote. The only time that Labor has polled above its national vote in Solomon was at the 2001 election, conducted just three months after Labor's breakthrough Northern Territory election victory under Clare Martin.

The only time Labor has won Solomon was on the election of the Rudd government in 2007, though Labor still polled below its national level.

So there is a strong correlation between the result in Solomon and the national vote. However, as the graph shows, there is very little correlations between Territory election results and Solomon results.

In the same period that Labor's 2-party preferred result in Solomon has stayed in a narrow range from 47.2% to 50.2%, Labor's results in Darwin at Territory elections have ranged from 40.7% in 1997 to 60.8% in 2005.

In short, there is not a lot of evidence that Territory election results have much bearing on Federal election results.

NT Chief Minister Terry Mills will certainly need to take note of the results. He will remember that when he was first elected to Parliament at the Blain by-election in July 1999, he suffered a 20.5% swing against him. Mills will also remember the 2005 election when he retained Blain, but found himself the only Country Liberal returned from north of the Berrimah line.

Mills entered the NT Legislative Assembly on the same day as Labor's Paul Henderson, who won the Wanguri by-election with a swing to Labor of 11.5%. In March 2000 the Country Liberals retained Port Darwin in a third by-election in the term, on the retirement of Shane Stone, and suffered a swing of 5.8%.

In August 2001 the Country Liberals lost office, the three by-elections proving to have accurately reflected public opinion of an ageing Country Liberal government.

What you can read into the Wanguri by-election is that voters in Darwin are not happy with the Mills government because of its increases in government prices, especially electricity, and because of its changes to the public service. A lot of voters view the changes as broken promises.

The by-election tells a lot about how the Mills government is currently placed in Northern Territory politics.

However, trying to read Federal implications into a by-election involving around four thousand voters in the far northern suburbs of a far northern city is just a soothsay too far. It's an interesting result, can create some speculation about Solomon, but that is about as far as you take the result.

Comments

One lesson is that some voters distinguish between Federal and State/Territory politics. Will it work in reverse or is Obeid too much of a dragging anchor on Gillard?

Second lesson: the simplistic commodification of political party 'brands' is as much a PR meme as a reality.

Third lesson: media not interested in good news for Labor. If swing had been against the ALP, it would have been highlighted on the Insiders, complete with Abbott 'interview'.

COMMENT: On your first two points, you are guilty of extrapolating a post specifically about Darwin into a generic opinion. If you check a comparison of NSW voting patterns over the last four decades, then state politics clearly has an impact on Federal voting intentions, and voters at certain times view the parties as being the same.

Your third point is also not though through properly. If the swing had been against Labor at the Wanguri by-election, it would have been astonishing given the unpopularity of the Territory government. No doubt excuses would have been sought as to why there was a swing to an unpopular Territory government. But as the swing was as expected against an unpopular Territory government, there was not an awful lot else to say about the result.

I only found out about the Wanguri by-election result from Pollbuldger and you. I heard nothing on the radio or TV nor did I read about it in the major daily newspapers. And yet a 12.7% at a by-election would normnally attract attention, especially if it is the biggest by-election swing for a first term government in two decades. Anyway, you mount a persuasive strong case that there are no significant federal implications. I wish I could simply accept what you say but the size of the swing is huge and runs contrary to all that we read and hear about Labor. The result confirms that we live in unusual times politically. It also makes me wonder about WA and whether the polls are that accurate over there.

COMMENT: The only people surprised by the Wanguri result are people who don't live in Darwin. An average Newspoll or Nielsen poll has a thousand people chosen at random. Two of those polls tell us more about the Australian electorate than 4,000 people at a by-election in one small corner of Darwin. All local factors, as evidenced by the immediate rumours of a leadership challenge in the CLP.

I think the lesson, if there is one, is that this (reinforcing the broader backdrop of the government's unpopularity) is another point in the seemingly-growing trend of swift, heavy swings against new governments and leaders - see also Victoria, Queensland, and to a lesser degree NSW (perhaps moderated by the gift that is NSW Labor).

A function of partisan dealignment, the hollowing-out of parties and congestion in the policy centre, perhaps. Whether this is a one-off or foreshadows a shortening of the 'natural cycle' of government will be interesting to watch.

COMMENT: I'd agree with those comments except to note that we are talking about an NT by-election. Politics is very very personal up there, and probably every constituent met at least on of the candidates during the by-election campaign. If you look at my graph, the Federal figures show very little shift from dominant party vote, but wild gyrations at Territory elections.

All the big swings in recent years have been at state elections, not Federal elections. I suspect de-alignment is a bigger issue currently at state elections where personality and managerial issues dominate. In Federal politics there is still enough ideological content to maintain traditional voting patterns. Though that ideological content is also shrinking.